Dino Saluzzi & Jon Christensen - Senderos (2005)

Artista: Dino Saluzzi & Jon Christensen

Álbum: Senderos
Año: 2005
Género: Tango / Latin Jazz
Duración: 79:43
Nacionalidad: Argentina / Noruega

Lista de Temas:
1. Vientos
2. Imagines...
3. Todos los Recuerdos
4. Tus Ojos...!
5. Detras de las Rejas...!
6. Los Ceibos de Mi Pueblo
7. Aspectos
8. Huellas
9. Ternuras
10. Allá!... en los Montes Dormidos
11. Tiempos
12. Fantasia
13. Formas
14. Eternidades - Loca Bohemia

Alineación:
- Dino Saluzzi / bandoneón
- Jon Christensen / drums, percussion

"Senderos" es otro disco del bandoneonista salteño Dino Saluzzi que vuelve a enrarecer el mundo del jazz con un formato instrumental tan atípico como improbable: un dúo de bandoneón y batería con el noruego Jon Christensen, que fuera miembro de uno de los dos cuartetos estables de Keith Jarrett en los años 70's. Que yo sepa no existen otros discos en que toquen, solos, bandoneón y batería, porque incluso los dúos con percusión son escasos: Coltrane y Rashed Alí, Anthony Braxton con Max Roach, Keith Jarrett con Jack De Johnette y no mucho más, aunque no debemos olvidar en el ámbito del rock (aunque progresivo y experimental) a los mexicanos de La Perra que hemos presentado en esta semana, hace unos días.

Así que desde el comienzo, este es un disco poco previsible... y más si en casi todo el disco Saluzzi no se ocupa sólo de los papeles armónico y melódico y que Christensen se limite a acompañarlo rítmicamente.

Todo es menos previsible y, por supuesto, más interesante. Hasta el punto de que es muchas veces la batería –o alguna de sus secciones: los platos, un tambor sin bordona, los ton-tones graves– la que propone una idea que luego proliferará acórdica o melódicamente, y no es raro que sea el bandoneón el que fija una acentuación regular mientras la percusión la comenta, la bordea y, en ocasiones, hasta la enmascara. "Vientos", titula su primer tema Dino Saluzzi. Podría tratarse de los vientos cordilleranos, que añora cada vez que está lejos de Salta. Podrían ser, simplemente, los que transitan por dentro de su instrumento. Y también podría aludir a lo que circula entre el bandoneonista y el baterista noruego Jon Christensen, o hasta de lo que los une: vientos que llevan y traen ideas musicales, que trasladan un tema, un motivo, una célula rítmica de uno a otro instrumento y de un músico a otro y que pueden convertirse en susurros o tempestades. Pero, además, es imposible no reparar en que tanto Saluzzi como Christensen tienen estilos a los que la palabra "aéreo" les viene como anillo al dedo.
Senderos es un álbum atípico pero, por otra parte, absolutamente coherente dentro de la trayectoria de Saluzzi, que ha tocado junto a contrabajistas como Marc Johnson o Palle Danielsson, en trío con la marimba y el vibráfono de David Friedman y el contrabajo de Anthony Cox, junto al cuarteto de cuerdas Rosamunde o en grupos multiétnicos como los que integró con el trompetista Palle Mikkelborg, Charlie Haden en contrabajo y Pierre Favre en percusión, o con Enrico Rava en trompeta, Harry Pepl en guitarra, Furio Di Castri en contrabajo y Bruce Ditms en percusión. Sin olvidar, obviamente, la que fue su invención más radical: las improvisaciones en bandoneón solo, inauguradas en el disco Kultrum.
En todas estas ideas aparece, sin duda, el rastro de Manfred Eicher, fundador de ECM (originariamente las siglas de Editions for Contemporry Music), ex cellista y ex técnico de grabación de la Deutsche Grammophon que en 1969 revolucionó el panorama del jazz con su concepto camarístico, sus grabaciones de extraordinaria fidelidad y sus presentaciones gráficas minimalistas. En esa estética tuvieron una particular incidencia los bateristas y, en particular, dos de ellos, presentes en la mayoría de las grabaciones realizadas por ECM durante sus primeras dos décadas de existencia y, de manera nada casual, asociados a dos de los grupos más importantes de Keith Jarrett, una de las figuras ejemplares del sello: Jack De Johnette (todavía integrante del notable trío que completa el contrabajista Gary Peacock) y Jon Christensen (miembro junto al saxofonista Jan Garbarek y el contrabajista Palle Danielsson del llamado cuarteto europeo del pianista).
Aquí Christensen aparece más libre y puntillista –es decir: más cercano al ideario de Eicher– que nunca. Y la interacción con el bandoneonista es permanente.

Este disco, además grabado magníficamente, de manera casi hiperrealista como acostumbra este sello, además, brilla con el sonido de un instrumento que resulta má que interesantes dentro de ese extraño planeta llamado jazz, al que Saluzzi no pertenece y su bandoneón tampoco, pero en los que son, sin embargo, figuras indiscutidas de ese estilo musical.

On his first offering in five years, Argentine bandoneon master Dino Saluzzi teams with veteran ECM session drummer Jon Christensen on Senderos. Of the 14 cuts here, ten are duets -- freewheeling, often improvised, intimate, and engaging to the hilt. What marks great improvisers is the ability to listen. The thought, spontaneous creation, and response that go into these pieces are remarkable. The players feel like a single entity as they wheel through their respective roles. The intense lyricism inherent in Saluzzi's approach comes from his immersion in the evolving folk musics of South America during these past 30 years and his incorporation of these musics in his own contemporary compositions. In addition, his love of jazz's dynamic and harmonic innovations, tango, and classical music meld in these duets. Christensen is the perfect foil, slipping inside the rhythmic bent of Saluzzi's chromatic forays and tagging them with his own spare flourishes, and moving them toward an opaque margin of expression while making them feel almost like dances. Four of the pieces here are Saluzzi bandoneon solos; indeed, they are songs. Saluzzi's deep sense of history and memory evoke not only earlier eras but the bittersweet nostalgia that communicates the ghostly traces of cultural -- particularly musical -- history as it marks emergence, evolution, and disappearance. Simply put, there is no other recording like this. It is a watershed marking a brilliant artist's return to recording, and a step outside his comfort zone that offers proof of the restless and poignant direction of his muse and his ability to translate it directly, honestly, and with passion.

Thom Jurek

If you’ve ever wanted to know what thinking musicians sound like, then you won’t want to pass on Senderos. This one-of-a-kind album pairs bandoneón maestro Dino Saluzzi with Norwegian drummer Jon Christensen for a session as spontaneous as it is fascinating. Putting both free improvisations and Saluzzi originals to the test, each of its 14 excursions pushes the limits of disclosure. On the one hand, Saluzzi’s playing is already so rhythmically multifaceted that to expand on it seems as futile as trying to add facets to a perfectly cut diamond. By the same token, Christensen is so sensitive to its surroundings that Saluzzi’s quietude becomes a suitable foil for the drummer’s whispering melodies, and vice versa. Granted, the combination may take some getting used to, less successful as it is in “Vientos” and “Todos los recuerdos,” each a playful scouring of fragmented cities and construction sites. That being said, there is good reason to hold on to these experiments, to trace in their sounding a line of thought developing in real time. We can relate to them as mirrors of vulnerability, of honesty.
The album thus follows a direct chronology, so that by the time they near the halfway point at “Los ceibos de mi pueblo…” Saluzzi and Christensen have begun to realize that rather than try to fill in each other’s spaces, it fares them better to let those spaces breathe. Christensen in particular knows the value of emptiness. The more of it he enables, the more it sings, as is clearest in his solo introduction to “Aspectos.” Saluzzi’s patient entrance unfolds its map without prematurely dancing toward the treasure it indicates. As well in “Huellas…,” where the drums seem to break off from the bellows—never muscling their way onward but marking all that came before. Such selflessness is inspiring to behold and achieves its most organic geometries in “Formas.”
The most lucid moments, however, are in Saluzzi’s four intermittent solos. Each is a soft spot, a blend of yearning and resolution that contorts disarmingly in “Fantasia” yet finds deepest traction in “Allá!… en los montes dormidos.” With an openness to expression that only decades can bring, it breathes, takes pause, reflects and self-reflects. So moved is Saluzzi that he sings toward the end, reminding us that all music begins and ends within.

ECM Review

The idea of nearly eighty minutes of bandoneon/percussion duets can appear somewhat daunting. On the other hand, the bandoneon is a full-range instrument, and nobody seems to bat an eye at piano/drums duets like Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi's recent encounter with drummer Paul Motian, Doorways. Still, one wonders whether or not such a concentrated dose would be palatable.
The answer, when the bandoneon player is Dino Saluzzi and the drummer is Jon Christensen, is a resounding yes.
Senderos began as a solo project in the manner of earlier recordings like Kultrum and Andina. When label owner/producer Manfred Eicher suggested that Saluzzi bring in Christensen for a bit of percussion on a couple of tracks, what began as simple embellishment turned into a three-hour session, after which the two artists realized that they had recorded an album.
Both musicians approach their instruments with both a reverence for deep tradition and an adventurous spirit that sees such tradition as a mere starting point for more extended invention. Only two players with this kind of approach could record an album like Senderos. On Christensen's '04 Rarum XX compilation, his liner notes simply read, "Band feeling is more important than bravura; Less is more; How fast can you play slower?; A beat is not always what you think it is." Christensen's commitment to finding the rhythmic nooks and crannies while avoiding anything remotely obvious is what makes his work with Saluzzi so compelling.
One of Eicher's strongest suits as a producer is his ability to order pieces so that an album takes on a larger narrative. The sequencing of the fourteen pieces on Senderos—ten duets, of which four are free improvisations and the rest Saluzzi compositions; plus four bandoneon solos—is so effective that the silence between tracks becomes an equal component, and the entire album feels like a continuous suite. While one might think that the limited textures would wear thin, over the course of repeated listens one is drawn into an aesthetic where the incredibly nuanced dynamics of each player create variations that, while often most subtle, develop a richly vivid audioscape.
Saluzzi is exceptional on his instrument in the way that he blends his Argentinean folkloric roots with broader concerns that include atonality and a clear understanding of the jazz tradition—often within the confines of a single piece, as on "Huellas." Christensen's elasticity of time means that his contribution often appears to be more about colour, but surprising rhythms often emerge in places, and in ways one would not expect.
Senderos is the kind of album that requires listeners to give up any notion of convention; it also expects them to permit themselves to be drawn into a world of delicate shadings and understatement. Senderos may be unconventional, but it is still approachable in its refined lyricism. One need only listen.

John Kelman

Tomasz Stanko put Dino Saluzzi and Jon Christensen in his band for his 2000 CD From the Green Hill, so their association isn't out of left field. But the decision to perform as a duo-bandoneon, percussion and that's it-is a strange one. Called in to add some cymbal strokes to an otherwise solo recording by Saluzzi, Christensen ended up contributing to nearly every track. Christensen says he will "never be a tango player," and no one will mistake him for one here, as he adds impressionist, pulseless accompaniment to Saluzzi's melancholy bandoneon.
At times, Saluzzi seems to think he's still going solo. He sinks deeply into a folk melody and seems to ignore Christensen, who in turn resists Saluzzi's more conventional song structures. "Detras de las Rajas...!" and "Huellas..." are more satisfying because Saluzzi adopts a more volatile style and follows Christensen into much more abstract places.

Aaron Steinberg

Para tener una idea de a qué suena esto, les dejo el primer tema en este link, ya que no encontré ni videos ni otra cosa para mostrarles...